A major rescue mission launched by Chinese officials proved unsuccessful when the woman they were attempting to rescue appeared to be quite skillful at floating.

Chinese officials launched a major rescue mission earlier this month after they received reports that a woman was drowning at a riverbank in Shandong Province. At least 18 officers gathered and worked for nearly an hour in an attempt to save the woman in distress. A crowd of over 1,000 people gathered to watch the rescue take place.

Once rescued however, authorities realized that the presumed woman in distress was actually an inflatable sex doll who had the natural ability to float.

"According to RocketNews24.com, after [realizing] their embarrassing mistake, the rescuers presented the doll to the crowd, who quickly covered their children's eyes and dispersed," Mail Online reported and that "Shandong Province is major a manufacturing center for sex toys."

Many users found the situation humorous, although a little strange.

"What's worse, that the crowd gathered to see someone possibly drown or that the partents only covered their kid's eyes when they realized it wasn't a dead body but just a blow-up doll?" Bradley asked on the Mail Online blog.

"The people that turned up to save someone should be proud. They mobilised quickly and acted to save someone - they didn't sit on their laurels while H&S audited and they didn't worry whether it was the right sort of someone to save, they just acted to save someone," Someguy added.

A similar situation occurred in the Chinese village of Liucunbu, outside the city of Xi'an, when a Chinese reporter mistook a sex toy for a rare mushroom.

"It has an eye and a nose, but we don't know what it is," one of the villagers told the Chinese reporter, according to an English translation from ABC.